An Unbearable Lightness of Brain Cells
by Troll Princess
Summary: A chance meeting between Connor and Dawn results in some major life-changing damage. BuffyAngel Xover, spoilers for "Home" and "Chosen".
1. A Chance Meeting

Title: An Unbearable Lightness of Brain Cells  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Fandom: Buffy/Angel  
  
Pairing: None. I swear. Witch's honor. I don't care what it looks like.  
  
Summary: A chance meeting between Connor and Dawn results in some major life-changing damage.  
  
Archive: Just give me fair warning.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. Otherwise, I'd be much nicer to them, with the sole exceptions of Connor and Dawn, who'd be fed to rabid mutant squirrels. But I swear I'll be nice to them in the story, honest.  
  
Spoilers for: Angel -- "Home", Buffy -- "Chosen"  
  
Chapter One: A Chance Meeting  
  
When Connor Jacobs bumped into the skinny brunette as he got off the Metro, he couldn't decide whether the strange tingle he felt was annoyance or love.  
  
Nope. No, he was definitely annoyed.  
  
"Hey, watch where you're going," he snapped over his shoulder.   
  
He could have sworn he heard her mutter, "Bite me, you jerk."  
  
Somehow, between Professor Lakefield's abysmal German literature final, Tracy moving out of their apartment this weekend, and his mother's continued requests that he move back to California after he finished college, that "bite me" crack was the one that grated against his last nerve. He stopped dead halfway to the escalator and spun around. "What'd you say to me?" he yelled back.  
  
The girl stuck her head through the open subway doors, bright blue eyes wide and a plastered-on smile just oozing sarcasm. "I hope you're devoured alive by vampires," she said sweetly, right before she ducked back into the subway car.  
  
The Metro train sped away as Connor shook his head and seethed silently on the platform. God, what a bitch.  
  
********  
  
When Dawn Summers bumped into the hot frat boy as she stepped onto the Metro, she couldn't decide whether the strange tingle she felt was hunger or love.  
  
Oh, no. That was hunger. Anybody who'd had to fight with a bunch of other people in a school bus for a medium french fry could recognize hunger right off the bat.  
  
She stepped up to the nearest pole and grabbed a tight hold, mentally going over her art history notes as she heard a "Hey, watch where you're going!" from behind her.  
  
Dawn rolled her eyes, so not in the mood to deal with arrogant frat guys, and said a bit louder than she'd intended, "Bite me, you jerk."  
  
A split second later, she caught sight of the guy as he turned towards the train and glared in her general direction. "What'd you say to me?" he called out.  
  
She grimaced and growled softly under her breath. Today was just not the day to piss her off. Giles's offers for her to join the Watchers when she graduated had gotten far too insistent, Willow kept sending her spellbooks and trinkets as if they were going out of style, and Buffy was still trying to get her to spend the summer with her in London or Budapest or wherever the hell she was training Slayers this month. So reining in her anger before she did something she'd regret, Dawn pasted on a fake smile, leaned out the open doors, and said, "I hope you're devoured alive by vampires."  
  
The look on his face as the train raced away from the station did just that much to make her day just a wee bit brighter. Sheesh, what a jerk.  
  
********  
  
If he was going to be honest, Connor would have had to admit that his apartment, while not in the worst part of town, was definitely in a section that required no eye contact and a firm grip on anything you wanted to keep. Keeping his gaze lowered to avoid looking at the gang members finishing off forties in the building's parking lot, Connor ducked between a pair of Cadillacs that had seen better decades and headed up the back steps to his apartment.  
  
He gritted his teeth at that last thought and tried not to notice the empty space in the lot where Tracy normally parked her Vespa. *His* apartment. It had been theirs until Tracy had gone to that conference for the pre-law students two months ago and met Brad. *Brad*. What the hell kind of a name was Brad? Wasn't that a nail or something?   
  
Yeah, that sounded like Brad. Thick, flat-headed, and short.  
  
Sighing, Connor reached into his jacket pockets for his apartment key, then stopped dead in his tracks. Where were his house keys? For that matter, he thought as he reached for his back pocket, where'd his wallet go? He could have sworn ... oh, no. That girl on the Metro had probably lifted them both. It'd be just his luck to get his pockets picked by someone who probably thought she could get away with anything. With that deceptively pretty face and those eyes, ten bucks says most people *did* let her get away with a lot of things.  
  
Okay, that was a mental image he didn't need in his head, Connor thought with a grimace, then dropped his knapsack onto the porch and tried the living room window. He'd always been the only one who could ever get the front window to open -- the landlord had warned them the windows were painted shut when they'd moved in, but Connor had opened the front window on the first try. And just as always, he'd barely given it a tug before it slid upwards as if it ran on rails. Smiling, he tossed his knapsack inside and crawled through the window.  
  
And froze.  
  
Jesus, what the hell had Tracy done to their apartment?  
  
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," he groaned, looking around the place. All of his things -- his photos, his textbooks, his clothes, his CDs -- were gone. There wasn't even faded cartoony shadows where any of his stuff should be. He would have thought that he'd find some evidence of his existence, but a thorough search of the apartment made it look as if he'd never lived there at all.   
  
Damn it, she'd even taken the framed photo of his parents and his sister Marcy that he'd hung in the kitchen. Connor groaned softly, then reached for the phone. As annoyed as he was with his mother's recent phone rants, this called for some serious venting, and that's what she was there for, after all.  
  
Two rings, then his mother's familiar voice said, "Hello, Jacobs residence."  
  
"Mom, you would not believe what Tracy did to the apartment," Connor said in a rush. "It's like she waved a magic wand and made everything that had my DNA on it vanish into another dimension or something. I swear, if I didn't know any better, I'd think Tracy lived alone with the TV and a bunch of rank-smelling law books."  
  
There was a pause, long and unnerving, then ... "Who is this?"  
  
Connor frowned. What was she playing at now? "Mom, it's me. Connor."  
  
"I'm sorry, dear, you must have the wrong number."  
  
He laughed softly, a little bit anxious. "What, did Marcy put you up to this?"  
  
"How do you know Marcy? Look, I can assure you, if you're looking for your mother, I'm not her. I don't have a son."  
  
It shouldn't have hit him so hard, that simple sentence said just so casually, but Connor wouldn't have been more stunned if she'd snuck up behind him and dropped a sack of bricks on his head. If this was a joke, it was about as fucked-up at it could get. He stared at the phone in something stuck between confusion and suspicion, not sure what was going on but positive it was the weirdest thing he'd ever had to deal with.  
  
She just ... she sounded so sure. So positive that she didn't have a son.  
  
"Sorry, I just ..." It suddenly hit him that he was holding the receiver away from him, and he whispered a "Sorry" into the speaking end. His hands shaking, Connor hung up the phone, staring at it as if it had grown tentacles and would crawl after him if he tried to walk away from him.   
  
He started to pace, back and forth and back and forth, the same frantic round-and-round he'd done every time he'd gotten this anxious for as long as he could remember. He practically hummed with nervous energy, and he ran his fingers roughly through his long hair as he let loose with a heavy exhale. "Okay, just stay calm, Connor. Take it easy. There's got to be a logical explanation for this."   
  
Yeah, sure. Logical. All of his wordly possessions were gone and his mother said she didn't have a son. Either there was a serious case of mass hysteria going on, or there was a camera crew stuffed into the closet.  
  
He very nearly made a crazed dash for the coat closet when a key rattled in the lock, and he froze as Tracy walked into the living room, followed close behind by that miniature musclebound jerk loaded up with groceries. Connor had to clench his fists to keep from pouncing on the guy and pounding him through the floor -- the guy might be a gym junkie, but Connor had always been able to hold his own in a fight, even with guys twice as big as this jagoff.  
  
"Tracy," he bit out, trying to surpress his anger. But then Tracy -- who, while she was moving onward and downward with Brad the Muscle Beach shrimp, had broken up with Connor as amicably as she could -- did something that both shocked and scared Connor to the core of his being.  
  
She grabbed one of her basketball trophies from the shelf next to the door, held it above her head, and with an angry glare right at him, his longtime girlfriend said, "All right, who are you and what are you doing in my apartment?"  
  
********  
  
Hitching her messenger bag up higher on her shoulder, Dawn tossed her long brown hair out of her face and jogged towards Stafford Hall. She liked living in Stafford -- most of the other artsy types were on the first floor with her and Casey, her theater-major roommate. Casey wasn't so bad, considering she didn't snore, always replaced what she borrowed or used, and hadn't sucked out Dawn's soul while she slept like Buffy's first college roommate had.   
  
Still, it would have been nicer if Dawn could have known that before she'd moved it. Dawn would have gladly given up the choice of smoking or non-smoking if she could have checked a box that said, "No, I do not want a roommate who howls at the moon, drinks my blood, uses any of my body parts for sick experiments or quick meals, or listens to Britney Spears." That would definitely have eliminated every form of evil she could think of, and maybe even a few that she would have been willing to room with but not to clean up after.  
  
Dawn dashed up the steps leading up to Stafford, just in time to nearly run headlong into Casey and the girl she'd been talking to. The two of them danced around one another before Dawn laughed and stepped away. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and said, "Oh, Casey, I was going to leave you a note, but could you do me a huge favor and stay over Tony's tonight? I've got my art history final on Monday and I want to --"  
  
Her dark brown eyes narrowing, Casey frowned and said, "I'm sorry, do I know you?"  
  
Dawn stared for a second, not understanding what Casey was trying to pull. Her roommate had never been big on surprises or pranks -- hell, she'd even argued against the first floor throwing a surprise birthday party for Dawn because *she* didn't want to deal with it. "Casey, what --" Something about the way both girls looked at her sent an eerie shiver running down Dawn's spine. A part of her brain that had stayed silent for a blissfully stretch of months suddenly awakened with a vengeance, a long-buried fear flaring to life the longer her roommate stared at her. Forcing a weak smile, Dawn said, "C'mon, quit it with the mental vacancy, would you?"  
  
Casey's frown deepened, and her friend rolled her eyes as the pair of them exchanged a glance. "Look, I don't know you," Casey said. "And if truth be told, you're starting to move into creepy stalker territory."  
  
Dawn didn't think, just reached out and grabbed a hold of Casey's right wrist. "Casey, I'm your roommate."  
  
Yanking her wrist from Dawn's trembling grasp, Casey darted further away from her and massaged the spot Dawn had grabbed onto as if Dawn had left behind deranged psycho cooties. "I don't know what you're on, but the addiction clinic's two blocks down. Comprende?" She gave the girl with her a gentle nudge, and the girl stopped gaping at Dawn like an out-of-water trout. "C'mon, Tina, let's go." Both girls gave her strange, annoyed looks as they headed down the steps, the hair on the back of Dawn's neck rising with every passing moment.  
  
What the hell was going on? How could the girl she'd spent the past year rooming with not know who she ... was ...  
  
Her fingers shaking with quickly growing anxiety, Dawn took a deep breath and walked into the dorm, ignoring the looks of the students standing nearby. This couldn't be happening, it just ... she'd had nightmares like this for the longest time, and now, when she had a real, nearly-normal life ...  
  
The left turn that led to her and Casey's dorm room came up quicker than she'd thought, and Dawn peered down it as if a swarm of vampires or werewolves or a crowd of Glory's minions were going to come careening around the far corner with her in their sights.  
  
She couldn't. She just couldn't. Because if she went down the hall and there was something else on her door, another name and a different dry-erase board and somebody else's patchwork of photos, she'd crack right then and there. Heck, she'd probably shatter into a million pieces in a literal sense, and just the thought of what might be left behind if that happened settled a healthy patch of goosepimples all over her arms.  
  
So, Dawn went straight for the pay phone.  
  
The pay phone in back of the TV room was, as usual, deserted. Dawn was the only person in the entire dorm who didn't have a cell phone, but that was because the last thing she needed was Giles calling her during a kegger and quizzing her on weapons or Xander giving her a ring during her oceanography class and filling her in on whatever demons he and the trained Slayers had decapitated lately in Cleveland. She'd always liked to think that should the world be ending and the others be desperate for her to show up, she could be hiding out in the deepest recesses of the library, in some chair deep amongst the stacks, absolutely and totally unreachable. One too many apocalypses will do that to a person.  
  
Dialing the 1-800 number and code for her phone card, Dawn couldn't help but feel grateful for some reason when the automated voice prompted her to dial without giving her any hassle about the validity of it all. Something told her she should be amazed it had worked, and she had to bite back a "Yes!" as she dialed the phone number Buffy had given her the last time they'd talked.  
  
A moment later, her sister's voice carried over the phone lines. "Hello, Buffy Summers speaking."  
  
"Buffy?"   
  
"Yes. Who's this?"   
  
Dawn's heart sank just a little bit in her chest, and her lips moved, but no sounds came out.   
  
"Hello?"  
  
Clearing her throat, Dawn managed a raspy, "It's Dawn." Then, that sinking feeling in her chest getting downright abysmal, she added, "You know, your sister."  
  
Dawn thought she heard a choking sound, but she couldn't be sure. "I don't have a sister," Buffy said. "Sorry, you've got the wrong number."  
  
The next sound that Dawn heard was the sharp click of a receiver being hung up.   
  
Taking deep, fast breaths that she didn't dare call hyperventilating, Dawn thrust the pay phone's receiver back towards the phone, not noticing when it dropped to dangle from side to side by the cord. All she could do was exhale and inhale harshly, a woozy feeling overcoming her. Her roommate didn't remember her. Her sister ... oh, God, Buffy had thrown herself off a tower for her and died for her and Buffy didn't *remember* her.  
  
And then Dawn did the only thing she could think of.  
  
She fainted. 


	2. Rejects From Another Time Zone

Title: An Unbearable Lightness of Brain Cells  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Fandom: Buffy/Angel  
  
Pairing: None. I swear. Witch's honor. I don't care what it looks like.  
  
Summary: A chance meeting between Connor and Dawn results in some major life-changing damage.  
  
Archive: Just give me fair warning.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. Otherwise, I'd be much nicer to them, with the sole exceptions of Connor and Dawn, who'd be fed to rabid mutant squirrels. But I swear I'll be nice to them in the story, honest. (By the way, anybody who thinks this isn't me being nice to them ... they're still alive, all of their body parts are intact, and they have yet to have naughty pictures taken of them in compromising positions with farm animals.)  
  
Spoilers for: Angel -- "Home", Buffy -- "Chosen"  
  
Chapter Two: Rejects from Another Time Zone  
  
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Dawn Summers who didn't exist.  
  
She didn't exist on the sidewalk leading through the quad. She didn't exist at the metro station. And she didn't exist on the train, regardless of the slimy jackass who insisted on bumping into her over and over again.  
  
"Do you mind?" Her voice was barely above a whisper, harsh and rattling in her throat.   
  
The jackass in question, a pale skinny punk with a wispy goatee and a ragged flak jacket, gave his equally skanky friend next to him a friendly shove and a laugh, then bumped against her again, twice as hard as he'd been doing since she'd gotten on the train. "Nope, princess, don't mind at all."  
  
And even though she didn't exist, Dawn Summers turned to look at him, and that's when his entire life changed.  
  
If anybody would have asked Dawn why the punk started to wail and scream the way he did, she would have told them that it must have been because she looked like a total wreck. That she'd been crying ever since she'd walked from the TV room to her dorm room and confirmed her guess that her name plate and photos wouldn't be on the door anymore. That her eyes were probably red, puffy and bloodshot, that she'd put money down on there being a dazed, painful look in the back of her eyes that'd bring down a water buffalo at fifty paces.  
  
But Dawn wouldn't have known about the green lights flickering along the edges of her irises like an iridescent fire. And she also wouldn't have known that as soon as he got off the train and walked back to his apartment, the pale skinny punk would shower, shave, eat three sandwiches, flush his stash, break up with his trampy girlfriend and pothead friends, see about enrolling in college courses, and immerse himself in the want ads until he found a real job.   
  
All Dawn would have known was that she'd boarded a train headed for a very bad part of town, the part of town where you avoided eye contact and held tightly onto your valuables, and she had no idea why.  
  
********  
  
"Did you hear what she said? Who are you and what do you think you're doing in her apartment?"  
  
Connor opened his mouth to answer, then quickly shut it again as he raised his hands where Tracy and the fireplug could see them. He thought about telling the truth -- I live here, we're boyfriend and girlfriend, you've got a birthmark shaped like a dragonfly on your inner thigh -- but he figured at least one of those was bound to be worth a free ride on Brad's fists right out the front window. So forcing an uneasy smile and trying desperately to come up with a reasonable explanation for all this, Connor said, "This is Sunset Road, is it?"  
  
Brad and Tracy looked at him like he had chipmunks dangling from his earlobes.  
  
"Right, not Sunset," he said, then managed a shaky laugh and shrugged. "Look, it's just a mistake, all right? My buddy Danny told me I could stay over his apartment tonight but I must have gotten the address wrong."  
  
"Damn straight," Tracy muttered, but the basketball trophy she held lowered just a bit.  
  
"Here, I'll just grab my stuff and --"  
  
Before he could grab onto his knapsack and make the quickest exit possible, Brad latched onto his collar and yanked him off his feet.  
  
"Brad!" Tracy yelled, dropping the basketball trophy.  
  
Brad shook Connor like a rag doll and snapped, "You honestly think we were going to believe that bullshit story?"  
  
"Yeah, I guess I did think that," Connor said, then grabbed onto Brad's wrists and pulled. Hard.   
  
He could have sworn he heard a loud "snap" sound out, but all Connor knew was that Brad screamed like a girl and let him drop. Working on a strange instinct he'd never known he possessed, he punched the musclebound jerk straight in the face, and Brad's nose gave a sickening crunch. Then, before he knew what he was doing, Connor grabbed onto Brad's T-shirt and flung him clean across the room.  
  
And through the window, and across the parking lot, where he landed with a loud thump and a weak, pitiful moan.  
  
There was a split second in Connor's rather narrow view of the weird events of the past hour or so where his normal life and thoughts crept into his head. For the briefest of instances, Connor could only savor the beating he'd finally given the moron who'd stolen his girlfriend, the way he'd barely broken a sweat and still left Brad lying in a heap on the other side of the parking lot, groaning in pain and probably regretting ever touching Tracy's wussy ex-boyfriend.   
  
It's why he couldn't help but smile in an oddly triumphant way, looking to Tracy as if he half-expected her to leap at him with arms open wide and swear to never, ever leave him again.  
  
But she chased away his hopes with a fearfully disgusted look and a quietly spoken, "Jesus, what are you?"   
  
The smile fell away as she ran out the front door to go to Brad, and Connor looked down at his hands before staring out at Brad, lying in agony fifty or sixty feet away. No one normal could have thrown someone Brad's size across a room, much less across what probably amounted to a city street. "I ... I don't know," Connor said in confusion, more to himself than anybody else.  
  
Already, a crowd was starting to form, the gang members and punks roaming the streets around here congregating for this new and different theater of violence. Out of the corner of his eye, with night vision that was growing more acute by the second, Connor spotted a girl in skintight cutoffs point in his direction, and it suddenly hit him that he was never going to find out what the hell was going on with the mass amnesia deal if he didn't get the hell out of here.   
  
Snatching up his knapsack, Connor darted out the front door and raced down the steps before anybody could stop him, halfway across the parking lot before anybody seemed to notice he was going anywhere. But then a voice called out, "Hey, someone stop that guy!"  
  
With all of the energy he could scrape together, Connor ran as fast as he could, dodging cars and garbage cans until the repetitive sounds of footsteps chasing after him died away.  
  
Then, too afraid to find out what would happen if he stopped, he just ran faster.  
  
He had no idea how long he ran, or where the hell he was going. All the voice of reason and logic in his head kept telling him was that he had to get away, that he had to find something ... no, someone ... and if he just kept running --  
  
He turned a sharp corner into an alleyway littered with trash and reeking of vomit and urine, catching his breath in his throat to keep from throwing up. A moment later, someone stepped out of the shadows into his path, and not able to stop quickly enough, he collided with the person in a weird sort of dance, heels spinning on whatever dreck coated the alley's floor. He almost stepped back to wipe his hands on his pants, unsure of who he could have run into in a place like this, when the crisp beam of a streetlight lit upon her face.  
  
What the hell was the girl from the metro doing in a place like this?  
  
"You," Connor blurted out, shocked to see her standing there.  
  
But the real shock came a moment later, when the pretty girl narrowed her tear-swollen eyes, stared at him long and hard, and said, "You're not real, either. Are you?" 


	3. No Gas, No Cigarettes, 1001 Miles to Now...

Title: An Unbearable Lightness of Brain Cells  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Fandom: Buffy/Angel  
  
Pairing: None. I swear. Witch's honor. I don't care what it looks like.  
  
Summary: A chance meeting between Connor and Dawn results in some major life-changing damage.  
  
Archive: Just give me fair warning.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. Otherwise, I'd be much nicer to them, with the sole exceptions of Connor and Dawn, who'd be fed to rabid mutant squirrels. But I swear I'll be nice to them in the story, honest. (Okay, sorta nice. No embarrassing photos, and pulses all around.)  
  
Spoilers for: Angel -- "Home", Buffy -- "Chosen"  
  
Author's Note: Fair warning ... this chapter's fairly gruesome at one point. Just figured I'd give a head's-up.  
  
Chapter Three: No Gas, No Cigarettes, 1001 Miles to Nowhere, and She's Wearing Sunglasses  
  
You'd think being in a twenty-four-hour Cajun/Japanese restaurant with a heavily pierced waitress and "Gay Bar" pounding from the stereo speakers would have made it a weird enough night for anybody.  
  
But watching the creepily silent girl across from him stare at her soda and fries as if they were going to pounce and tear out her jugular, Connor was fast beginning to realize that he didn't know the meaning of the word "weird". It was entirely possible, though, that the girl on the other side of the table knew how to say it in forty-seven different languages and had it tattooed in bright red in a very embarrassing place.  
  
"So," he said.  
  
No answer.   
  
Connor drummed his fingertips on the tabletop, took another quick glance outside to make sure they hadn't been followed, and said, "Do you have a name? Because calling you She Who Stares Blankly Into Space is going to get really old, really fast."  
  
Still no answer. Okay, so cracking jokes wasn't going to work.   
  
The only other customer, an old woman on the other side of the restaurant, cackled hysterically at some unknown joke, and shivers ran up and down Connor's spine. Something about this place didn't feel right, as if everything had suddenly shifted slightly to the left of reality and only he and Dawn were noticing. Not only that, but this new and frantic sensation settled over him, like someone was coming and he wasn't ready for it.  
  
The old woman laughed again, louder this time, and Connor gave her an annoyed look. She caught his gaze with her own, frightingly direct and sparkling with mischief as she winked at him. He stiffened and turned back to Dawn. Oh, yeah. Logic and reason had officially been thrown out the damn window, and were currently splattering across the pavement with a resounding squish.  
  
So. Situation fucked up, and moving further away from normal with every passing second. Check.  
  
Dawn sat on the other side of the booth with her back to the wall and her knees tucked up against her chest, tuning out the rest of humanity as she focused solely on her food. She'd only tried one french fry before she'd stopped eating them, although Connor could understand why. When they'd ducked into the place for cover, he hadn't expected to bother to sit down and try eating, what with his wallet missing. But since she'd slid into the nearest booth and ordered fries and a drink, he'd done the same. Hey, if she was willing to order, she had to have money, right?  
  
Then again, she hadn't known that her french fries were going to come tasting like wasabi and cayenne, but Connor didn't think anybody could see *that* coming.   
  
Summoning up his courage, even though he was fairly positive he didn't want to hear the answer, Connor asked, "What did you mean, about me not being real, either?"  
  
"I'm not real. You're not real." Her voice painfully small, she turned those big blue eyes to him and said, "Nobody remembers you, do they?"  
  
"No," he said. "My girlfriend, my mom --"  
  
"It's my fault."  
  
"What?"   
  
"I must have rubbed off on you or something," she said. A strange undercurrent in her voice chilled him to the bone, daring him to question her sanity. He wanted to, he really did, but ... "I bumped into you on the train and gave you memory spell cooties. Poof. No more ..."  
  
Her eyes narrowed, and he suddenly realized she was looking for his name. "Connor ..." His surname died on his lips, and he cleared his suddenly rough throat to say, "Just Connor."  
  
The gazes connected, and the two of them reached a silent agreement of sorts. "Dawn," she said, not giving her last name, either.  
  
He nodded, just as accepting of this situation as she was. For some reason, it just felt ... right. His family forgetting him, her fading from the memory of those she loved, the two of them on their own with no one but themselves for protection. Like something bigger than themselves clicking into place.  
  
Still, something in her quiet way, in the weird greenish glint her eyes took on in certain lights, set the big-brother vibe he usually saved for Marcy into full effect. "Are you okay? And when I say okay, you know I mean sane, right?"   
  
She went back to staring at her fries, hauntingly still.  
  
Aw, hell, I give up, he thought. He gestured to her plate of fries, just as ferociously hungry as he had been all night long. "Are you going to finish those?"  
  
She shook her head. "I don't feel like eating anymore."  
  
Connor reached for her plates of fries.  
  
"Ever."  
  
Connor froze and stared at her, then slowly drew his hand back. Okay, definitely weird beyond all human comprehension.  
  
In a very tinny, hollow voice that hinted at tears soon forthcoming, Dawn asked, "What's happening to me?"  
  
Thinking of the hole in the wall of his apartment about the size of Tracy's new boyfriend, Connor grimaced. "I could ask you the same question."  
  
They stared at each other for a long, painful moment, too wrapped up in each other's confusion and pain to notice their waitress until she slid a slip of paper in front of them and said, "Your check, guys," punctuating the statement with a snap of her gum.  
  
The pair of them exchanged a glance, realizing at the same time that neither one of them had any money. The waitress's brow furrowed as she picked up on the sudden uneasy tension between the two of them. "Staring at it ain't going to make it pay itself, you know."  
  
With another loud snap of her gum, the waitress made to walk away, but before she could, Dawn reached out and grabbed her wrist in an iron grip. The waitress lurched to a stop, narrowing her eyes and readying for what Connor could already tell was going to be a full-on blowout, when Dawn's steady gaze locked onto hers.  
  
"We already paid," Dawn said, in an eerily calm voice that made the hair on the back of Connor's neck stand on end.  
  
The waitress let loose with an apologetic smile. "You did, didn't you?"  
  
"We tipped, even."  
  
"Biggest tip I got all day."  
  
Connor openly gaped at the waitress as she walked away, snapping her gum and dreaming up what she'd do with her large imaginary tip. He turned to look at Dawn, who'd curled back up in the far corner of the booth again and looked about as freaked out about what she'd just done as he was.  
  
"You, um ... you forgot to tell her that we're not the droids she's looking for."  
  
Another bout of silence from her. But her fingers trembled as they clutched at the knees of her jeans, and he felt an icy chill blanket his skin. "How'd you do that?"  
  
"I don't know. I just did with the grabby hands and made her think what I wanted to think." She let loose with a small moan, some nightmare having come to life to scare the hell out of her, and she looked over at him with her eyes glistening with tears. "Oh, that's not good. Not good at all ..."  
  
Connor flinched as her eyes flickered with a very realistic spark of emerald-green fire, and he bent forward to whisper, "Hey, shut your eyes."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"They're sort of ... glow-in-the-dark."   
  
"Oh," she said, visibly growing pale. Her eyes immediately slammed shut.  
  
He glanced around to make sure nobody had seen, then said, "Do you have a pair of sunglasses?"   
  
Dawn reached to the side and grabbed her messenger bag, then opened the flap and dumped it upside down. A bottle of green nail polish and a bracelet made of mah-jongg tiles fell onto the table.  
  
"So that's a no, then," Connor said. Glancing towards the cashier near the door, an idea quickly formed in Connor's mind, and he got up from the table. "Wait here."   
  
Dawn nodded, her eyelids tightly shut.  
  
Heading up to the cashier, an overweight kid Connor's age with more zits than hair, Connor forced his best friendly smile and said, "Hi, I was here a few days ago and I could have sworn I left my cell phone and a pair of sunglasses behind. You wouldn't happen to have a lost-and-found I could look through, do you?"  
  
"Sure," he said, and lifted a box from behind the counter. The lost-and-found box practically overflowed with all manners of left-behind odds-and-ends, giving Connor the impression that a lot of people ended up here, but not a lot of them came back for more. Considering the protest his stomach was issuing about the french fries, he wasn't surprised. The cashier gave the box a push across the counter to Connor and smiled wryly. "Better watch it, man. Knowing the customers we get, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a corpse crawled out of there."  
  
Connor grinned weakly and tried not to step away from the box. The way today was going, he wouldn't be surprised by anything anymore.  
  
The cashier turned back to whatever comic book he'd been reading, and Connor bent over the box, looking for things the two of them could use. He winced as he realized how fast "the two of them" had popped into his mind, and shook the thought from his head before rummaging deeper in the box. He found two pairs of sunglasses, a horn-rimmed pair with light pink lenses that were too scratched to be worth using, and a pair of cheap dollar-store rounded lenses with clean dark plastic in the rims.   
  
Tossing the hornrims back into the box and pocketing the dollar-store sunglasses, Connor dug around until he came up with three cell phones, two of which were the pre-paid kind and both of which, he found out with a bit of subtle checking, had more than enough minutes left on them to be useful. It wasn't like anybody was going to call them, but with no money and a pretty slim chance of getting collect calls accepted, if they were going to test the big memory-whozits theory, telephone access would be a big plus.   
  
Well, with two prepaid cell phones, that was one less thing to worry about.  
  
********  
  
Oh, God ... this is what she'd always been worried about.  
  
As soon as Connor had walked away, the old woman had rushed over as if carried on a hurricane wind. An unmistakable shadow of giddy madness hid in her rheumy blue eyes, her crooked smile lined with perfect, even brown teeth. She reached for Dawn like something out of a nightmare, wearing the expression of someone seeing an angelic vision of Heaven.   
  
Dawn scrambled backwards in the booth, whimpering as she backed into the wall.   
  
"You're a fairy tale, aren't you, girl?" the old lady asked, her voice deceptively sweet. Something's not right, Dawn thought, and God, don't let it be what I think it is ...  
  
"What?" she said softly.  
  
"A great pretty fairy tale, a skinny little myth. All bright and shiny," the old lady said, her voice trailing away as she tried to stroke Dawn's hair.  
  
Dawn moaned quietly, long-buried fears flaring to life in a heartbeat. "Oh, God, not again ..."  
  
"Again and again and again --" The old lady hitched towards her in a quick, jerky movement that made Dawn yelp loudly, the old woman moving towards her like a wild cat on the prowl. "The goddess is gone, but the threat remains, doesn't it? Waiting and waiting, all for such a sparkling, shimmering thing like you."  
  
Dawn's voice caught in her throat. "C-Connor!"  
  
"Yes, call your dark knight. That's what he's there for. Destiny says so. Knights protect damsels and gold, forever and ever." The crazy woman's arm snaked closer, Dawn wincing as she ducked away from the woman's tainted touch. "Damsels and gold ..."  
  
"Stop it!"  
  
A second later, the old lady lurched backward in the seat, as Connor latched onto her shoulder and pulled her away from Dawn's trembling form. The old woman stumbled away, Connor flashing her a dark look before sliding the sunglasses across the table to Dawn. She quickly slipped them on, making sure to hide her glowing eyes from the cashier and the waitress -- the only other people left in the restaurant, if the fact that they were the only ones watching the scene unfold was any indication.   
  
"Back off and leave the girl alone," Connor said, the tone of his voice laced with steel.  
  
The crazy woman looked up at him with something akin to awe. "The child of darkness," she said in a high-pitched squeal, almost as if she were meeting a famous actor or something. "Made of evil and bloodshed, maker of shadows and lies. Done with blacker purposes, are you? Time to meet your fate head-on, then?"  
  
"Don't listen to her," the cashier said. "She's in here every night, like she's waiting for someone." The cashier shook his head with annoyance. "If you ask me, she's one too many talking animals short of a Disney movie."  
  
"Yeah, I was starting to get that impression," Connor muttered. He didn't take his eyes off the old lady, but the cashier's momentary distraction was enough for the crazy woman to launch herself at an obviously terrified Dawn once again. "I said, hands off!" Connor said, making another grab for her.  
  
The old lady keened pitifully, a clawed hand reaching, reaching ... "Just want to touch the pretty light --"  
  
Connor sensed it before he felt it on his skin, an odd tingling that flashed over him in a sharp, prickling warmth. Common sense screamed at him to make a run for the nearest exit, but a newer, calmer voice in his head told him to stand still, that everything would be all right, that nothing would harm him here.  
  
Even as their sodas boiled in their glasses and Dawn's bottle of nail polish cracked and exploded in a sudden flare of intense heat.  
  
It took a minute for his brain to process it all, to go from the nail polish bubbling on the table to his own unmarred hand only inches away. From his silent acceptance of the burns he Ididn't/I have to the squealing old woman beside him. From her cries of agony, to the putrid stench of overcooked hot dogs that suddenly hung crisp and noxious in the air, the only scent that Connor could associate with the sick odor of the woman's quickly disintegrating hands.  
  
Connor flung the crazy lady aside before he knew what he was doing, the smell of her roasting flesh settling everywhere. The cashier ducked off in the direction of the bathrooms -- Connor could only presume he was going there to throw up everything he'd eaten for the last decade -- and the waitress was out the front door so fast, Connor was amazed she didn't leave skid marks.   
  
And frozen with shock over what the hell had just happened, all he could do was stare at the old lady, this mentally fucked-up woman wailing at the top of her lungs as she gaped at the stumps where her hands had once been.  
  
Connor gulped back the almost casual disgust he felt at the sight of it all. Jesus, you'd think he'd grown up seeing carnage like this on a daily basis. "I hate to say I told you so," he said quietly.  
  
He reached down to ... what? Help her up? Hurt her worse? Hell, even Connor didn't know why he held out a hand to the severely injured woman, but she took one look at him and screamed at the top of her lungs, scrambling awkwardly to her feet before racing out into the street.  
  
Aw, hell, they couldn't be here. Not after this. He turned back to the booth to get Dawn and flinched.  
  
The booth was empty.  
  
"Dawn?"  
  
********  
  
Connor caught up with her a block away from the restaurant, running as fast as she could, his pulse finally beginning to slow down the closer he got to her. A hollow place inside of him roared to life the instant he'd realized she was gone, and Connor felt the sharp ache in his chest fade the second he grabbed onto her arm.  
  
For someone he'd only known for less than a day, she was becoming a vital part of his existence, and it wasn't whether he did or didn't like it that scared him.  
  
It was that considering all of the other weird stuff that had gone on in the past few hours, their unnerving connection and that crazy old lady and what it all meant somehow ... fit. Like he'd just been killing time with the rest of his life waiting for this.  
  
"Where are you going?" he said, as she slowed from a run to what was, at the very least, a slow jog.  
  
"Somewhere where crazy people aren't regulars," she said.  
  
Well, he sure as hell couldn't argue her on that one. "Dawn, what the hell happened back --"  
  
And that was when Godzilla attacked.  
  
Okay, so whatever it was that grabbed onto Dawn and sent him flying against the nearest wall wasn't *technically* Godzilla. But it sure looked a hell of a lot like him -- well, the one in that crappy American remake, in any event, all slick black skin and bony ridges and the wicked flicking tail that had slammed into Connor's chest like a pick-up truck at full speed. Its shimmering black gaze darted between Connor's crumpled form and the girl it dangled off the ground by her neck.  
  
Connor tried to get to his feet, a ripple of pain echoing through his entire body with a single movement. "Let go of her, you son of a bitch!"   
  
Its tail whipped through the air once again, but this time, the tip wrapped tightly around his neck, dragging him forward until Connor was practically nose to nose with the thing. And then, in an elegant hiss that sounded almost gentlemanly, the thing said, "Takes one to know one, boy."  
  
Dawn rasped out a ragged breath, and the creature dropped Connor to the pavement without ceremony as its face turned towards her, the dark thing eyeing her crooked sunglasses with amusement. "Is this your warrior, Key? This is who you choose?" The creature chuckled, more like a growling rumble in the center of its chest than an actual laugh. "Fate is a silly creature, isn't she? So easily amused, and such a lousy, sick sense of humor."  
  
Something in its eerily familiar voice struck a chord with Dawn, and she choked out a cough before she finally managed to wheeze, "Doc?" 


	4. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibil...

Title: An Unbearable Lightness of Brain Cells  
  
Author: Troll Princess  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Fandom: Buffy/Angel  
  
Pairing: None, I swear. Witch's honor. I don't care what it looks like.  
  
Summary: A chance meeting between Connor and Dawn results in some major life-changing damage.  
  
Archive: Just give me fair warning.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. Otherwise, I'd be much nicer to them, with the exceptions of Connor and Dawn, who'd be fed to rabid mutant squirrels. (So I won't really be hurting them, unless you count ripping their emotional stability to shreds as pain.)  
  
*** Chapter Four: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility ***  
  
"Doc?"   
  
The creature hissed out an amused chuckle, the sound scratching through the darkness like nails against a chalkboard. Its grip on Dawn's throat tightened, and her whimpers became choked, raspy wheezes as her sunglasses slipped off and clattered onto the sidewalk. "Ah, you mean the Guardian. Oh, we tore him to pieces years ago," it said almost dismissively, its rancid breath replacing what little clear night air Dawn managed to inhale. "So eager to spill your blood for Glorificus, and so cowardly when it came to taking his punishment."   
  
Behind him, Connor tried to rise to his feet once again. The creature's tail casually whipped out and flung him down against the pavement. Dawn could have sworn she heard bones crack.  
  
"At least he tasted good," it said, ignoring the young man groaning in pain behind it.  
  
Blinking back tears, Dawn choked out, "Are you g-going to kill me?"  
  
The demon's lip curled in a creepy smile, and its grip on her neck remained firm as she clawed desperately for release. "Oh, no, dear. The only one who won't come out of this battle alive will be me, I'm afraid. But this isn't about killing you. This is about letting the others know where you are." Its massive head moved closer to hers, almost as if to kiss her, and in a frighteningly cold whisper, the creature hissed, "They come for you now."  
  
Dawn's eyes widened as the demon's beady eyes flickered briefly, the sudden weight of a thousand excited gazes upon her. "C-c-connor ..."   
  
Coughing roughly, Connor rose to his feet in an unsteady sway, gripping his midsection as he stared down the creature holding Dawn in its scaly grasp. Then Connor narrowed his eyes at the demon and did the first thing he could think of.  
  
He ran.  
  
The demon's high-pitched cackling echoed over Dawn's increasingly strained whines. "Some warrior," the demon said, turning its full attention to the pale, trembling girl in its grasp. She whimpered from the most intense fear she'd felt in years as heat rose from the pavement in rippling waves, and a sick squishing sound echoed up as the demon's shifting feet lifted up and down in the swiftly melting sidewalk.  
  
"B-but I'm not the Key anymore," she said.  
  
"Is that what your precious witch told you?" Dawn winced at that, remembering the day she'd begged Willow to do a spell or something, to make sure she'd stay safe from any of Glory's minions that might still be around. Glass shattered loudly not far away, but Dawn was too freaked out to pay much attention. The creature grinned in sick anticipation as the heat rising from her skin started making her clothes smoke ominously. "The Key was merely waiting, dear."  
  
She didn't want to know, but the question came anyway. "For what?"  
  
"To become what it was meant to become. And to find itself a hero."   
  
It tilted its head curiously, and the two of them spotted Connor, standing not five feet away as if he'd teleported out of thin air. The creature's beady eyes narrowed, and it gifted Connor with an almost piteous look. "If only you knew, boy --"  
  
But Connor didn't want to hear it, a strange grin crossing his face as he raised a can of hairspray in the air and hit the button.  
  
The supernaturally overheated air ignited the hairspray as soon as the two connected, and the demon let out a high-pitched scream as it was engulfed in flames. Dawn fell to the ground after it let go of her neck, trying to catch her breath and desperately ignoring the greenish tint the world seemed to have taken on. The creature flailed backwards in agony, only succeeding in making the flames grow higher and swallow it whole.  
  
Connor took a step back from the sudden rush of flames only a moment before the hairspray can exploded in his hand.  
  
Dawn screamed as she scrambled past the inferno engulfing the demon and headed for Connor, who collapsed to the ground and curled up in a ball. The burning creature still stumbled awkwardly towards her, and Dawn called Connor's name as if he could do anything to help her with --  
  
But all of a sudden, there he was, between her and her pursuer, teeth bared and eyes blazing like an angry Doberman protecting its owner. No weapons at hand and his forearm a bloody, mangled mess, he stood (or rather, crouched) between her and the demon, waves of anger flowing from him.   
  
With one last, anguished cry, the demon fell before them, a barbecued heap of flesh still smoking all over.  
  
The two of them sat there on the ground for a long moment, their chests heaving as they waited for the demon to pull the inevitable horor-movie schtick and get up agan for one more go. But after a good thirty seconds, they managed to relax ... just in time for them both to get a good look at the extent of Connor's burns.  
  
Dawn groaned as she moved close to get a better lookat his charred flesh. "Oh, God ... your arm ..."  
  
"I've had worse," he said, forcing a smile.  
  
The top layer of his skin slid off like a glove two sizes too big and fell to the ground, the two of them staring at it in abject disgust.  
  
Connor winced and looked away. "Okay, I stand corrected," he said. Trying to distract himself, he took in their surroundings, the streets still strangely deserted, and wondered why the hell no one had come out to witness the fight and ensuing explosion. Hell, he was amazed no one had shown up when he'd broken the front window of the pharmacy around the corner in his search for something combustible.   
  
He hissed as Dawn took his injured arm in her hands, and he nearly tugged it away as he said, "Hey, what do you think you're doing?"  
  
Her gaze connected with his, confused and knowledgeable all at once, and he relaxed in total contrast to what his mind was screaming at him to do.   
  
"Guessing," she said with a disquieting roll of her shoulders.   
  
Her fingertips trailed over his burnt skin in a light, feathery dance, and his skin twitched under her artful touch as if reaching for more of her. Connor closed his eyes tight as an almost orgasmic rush swept over his forearm, drowning out the mind-numbing burns that stretched from elbow to fingertips. When he opened his eyes once again, the scorched flesh was nearly whole again, the newly regrown skin still a harsh shade of red. She gently released his hand, and the absence of her touch was like a vacuum to some newfound part of him.  
  
"Thank you," he said softly.  
  
She kept quiet, too busy staring at her own hands to pay him any mind.  
  
Getting to his feet, Connor walked around her and studied the dead creature lying not far away. Her sunglasses lie on the ground undamaged by the heat and fire for reasons Connor didn't even want to start thinking on, and he retrieved them for her to hide the now unmistakable greenish light to her eyes. He handed them to her as he looked down at the corpse, and she slipped them back on in a daze. "Did I miss anything?"  
  
"There are more of them coming for me," Dawn said, her voice oddly hollow.  
  
"They had enough ugly left to make more of these?" Connor kicked the demon, hard enough for something heavy and metal to fall from the smoldering corpse. Curious, he picked it up and examined it thoughtfully.  
  
It was a sword. An real, unmarred sword with weird, greenish symbols carved into the hilt.  
  
They must not have noticed it in the chaos of the fight, Connor thought as he tested the feel of the blade far too expertly for his frazzled mind to contemplate. He narrowed his eyes at the dead demon. All that had happened, and it had never even pulled its weapon? "It doesn't make sense," he muttered.  
  
Dawn snorted derisively at that, as if she understood what he was thinking. "My family consists of a bunch of vampire slayers, a British librarian, a one-eyed carpenter, a former principal, and an ex-bad guy who thinks he's Doctor Who. If you want to see something that doesn't make sense, come to my house at Christmas."  
  
"You almost sound like an escapee from a mental ward, you know that?"  
  
Those eerie eyes of hers peered up at him through the darkness, and she took a deep breath before saying, "I'm really a supernatural ball of energy that can be used to destroy the universe."  
  
A long pause, then ... "Did I say 'almost'?"  
  
"Not believing in it isn't going to make it go away."  
  
"I don't want it to go away, I want --" Dawn's expression went cold, and Conor stopped himself before he could say anything he'd regret later on. Slipping the phones from his pocket, he waved them at her as a peace offering. "You want to try your family?"  
  
He tossed one of the phones to her, and she caught it by reflex, then immediately dropped it. The same heat that rose from her skin and bypassed her clothes for the most part had melted finger grooves into the plastic casing of the phone where she'd caught it. Dawn fixed Connor with a withering glare and said, "As much as I'd like the phrase 'You must have the wrong number' to make me bawl like an infant for the rest of my life, thanks, but no thanks."  
  
Something occurred to him, some stark ray of light at the end of the tunnel, and Connor gingerly dialed the phone with his quickly healing fingers. "I didn't even get a chance to try my father's cell phone," he said. "He carries it with him everywhere, and it's late, but --"  
  
"He won't know you," Dawn said.  
  
"I'm not that easy to forget," he said, trying to smile at that.  
  
"And I am?"  
  
A sick, embarrassed rolling settled in his stomach at the look on Dawn's face. He opened his mouth to apologize, but was interrupted as a woman with a honeyed Southern accent answered the phone.  
  
"Angel Investigations, Fred speaking."  
  
Connor frowned. "Sorry, wrong number," he said, staring at the phone in confusion as he pushed "End." How the hell had he dialed the wrong number? His father had had the same damn cell phone number for years. Connor could dial it in his sleep, and on one memorable occasion, had actually done so. From the complaints he'd heard from his amused parents later on, he had impeccable timing and, when he'd asked what they'd meant by that, he'd gotten psychological scarring to last a lifetime.  
  
But he'd probably just misdialed, right? Yeah, he'd just hit the wrong number along the way and ended up calling some detective agency. Exhaling raggedly as a icy thread of fear snaked up his spine, Connor paid closer attention this time as he dialed.   
  
But he wasn't as shocked as he should have been when that Texas twang carried over the phone again with, "Angel Investigations, Fred speaking."  
  
Oh, God. This wasn't happening.   
  
"Is there --" Connor nearly choked on the words, but damn it, this was his father's phone number and he wasn't about to admit defeat without trying. "Is there a Steven Jacobs available?"  
  
"Nope, can't say that there is."  
  
"You wouldn't know someone named Connor, would you?"  
  
The other end of the phone went strangely silent for a long moment, before the woman on the other end spoke in a soft, pained whisper. "Connor?"  
  
Connor shook his head, forcing himself to banish any hopes he might have left. He was fooling himself into believing things that were turning out to be pure bullshit, is what he was doing. He didn't even know the person he was talking to, so that familiar feeling he got when he heard her voice was just the last shred of hope he had left clinging onto his normal, average, everyday life with every ounce of strength at its disposal.   
  
"Sorry. I just ... sorry," he blurted, forcing himself to push the "End" button before she said anything more hurtful. Before she told him that no, there was no one there who knew a Connor, and she was really sorry, and she hoped he found what he was looking for, that he found where he truly belonged.   
  
And if someone on the other end clamored for the phone at the last second and yelled his name, he didn't hear it.  
  
The blade felt right in his hand, the weight of it balancing him out in a place he couldn't even identify. A quick glance at his forearm revealed his burns completely healing over before his very eyes, and he shot Dawn a curious glance.  
  
All she could do was try to stifle her tears as she wrapped her arms around his neck.  
  
The sword and phone both slipped from his grasp, his clammy palms not willing to hold on. Connor exhaled with a ragged shudder as his arms slipped around Dawn's midsection, all of his fear and defiance flowing from him in a single breath. And as simply as that -- if the last twenty-four hours of his life could ever be considered simple -- his life's focus shifted to the trembling girl latched onto him, this force of nature he somehow knew he was meant to guard with his life.   
  
If this was his destiny, then so be it.  
  
********  
  
*** One year later ***  
  
"You sure about this?"  
  
She said nothing, but then she hadn't spoken aloud in six months. Connor wasn't surprised by the silence anymore.  
  
Tilting his head to get the too-long hair out of his eyes, Connor glanced at the back seat of the Jeep, reassuring himself with the comforting sight of massive firearms and razor-sharp implements of death. Still-fresh blood smeared off his arsenal onto the upholstery in wet, dark streaks, haunting reminders of their last battle against the demons. In the last twelve months, the heavy scent of demon blood in the air had become a security blanket, a sign that they were safe again, if only for a little while.  
  
He turned around again, giving Dawn a casual once-over. She sat perfectly still and straight in the passenger's seat, her hands clasped in her lap. The pink track suit she wore didn't show half the wear that his trench, cable-knit sweater and jeans did, but they'd been through just as much. The intense heat she generated during stressful situations only affected her clothes anymore when her concentration was off, so the track suit didn't have the same scorched holes in it that her outfits inevitably developed over time. The newsboy cap and sunglasses she wore hid her beauty more than Connor would have liked, but they also hid more important things.   
  
Dawn's eyes and hair had long ago disintegrated from the intense energy throbbing away in her tiny body. Some things weren't worth showing off to the general populace.  
  
Dawn tilted her head slightly, almost as if to look at him, and a gentle smile crossed her face. *You're afraid, aren't you?*  
  
Connor's narrowed gaze darted to her, and he frowned. The voice wasn't in his head so much as it was all around him, in the soft yet demanding tone of a woman narrating a '50s public service film. It hadn't taken him long for him to figure out that as her destined protector, the sworn knight born to serve the Key, he was the only one who could hear that lovely, enchanting voice settling over him like a warm, heavy fog.  
  
That's not to say, however, that hearing it didn't seriously piss him off sometimes.  
  
Gritting his teeth, Connor needlessly shifted his gaze back to the road. "Why the hell would I start being afraid now?"  
  
She reached out and dragged her fingertips over the tear in the front of his sweater. The frayed edges had gone a dark, rusty maroon.  
  
He squirmed away from her touch, though more from denial than anything else. "Damn demon shoved a barbecue fork into my stomach," he muttered. "Considering how many inches of my intestines came out with it, I think I'm allowed at least another two weeks of sulking."  
  
Dawn's smile slipped a little, and she lifted her hand to touch his cheek.   
  
Against his better judgment, he leaned into her touch a little. Couldn't help it, really. He knew damn well by now where his destiny lie.  
  
The car's horn bleated, and Connor glared down at the steering column. "Don't you start."  
  
The steering wheel spun a bit under his palm, and for once, he didn't even flinch. Sighing, Connor kept one hand on the wheel while he leaned over to change the radio station with the other.  
  
Ha ... as if he had any control whatsoever over either device. Not long after they'd first come together, Connor had come out of a defensive battle against three of Doc's brethren sore, bedraggled, and generally pissed off. Walking alongside Dawn afterwards with an overloaded pack, Connor had made a casual crack about having to walk across the continent and back again dragging a wheelbarrow full of blades and ammo behind them.  
  
Two minutes later, as they'd passed a car dealership, the Jeep had roared to life, flipped on its high beams, and rolled up behind them like a lost puppy.  
  
Dawn had gotten into the passenger's seat as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  
  
Yeah, right.  
  
Lacking much of an argument, Connor had hurled the pack into the back and climbed into the driver's seat. In a fleeting moment of annoyance, Connor dubbed the Jeep Brad, mostly because it insisted on finding his last nerve and fraying it beyond recognition. The fact that it fought him on every little decision he made and fawned over Dawn like a hopeful suitor hadn't escaped Connor, either.  
  
Like now, when the car's response to Connor switching the radio to a hard rock statio was an eardrum-piercing squeal of feedback and a return to its own personal radio station. Which, at the moment, was playing the StrongBad techno song.  
  
Connor couldn't resist a smirk at that. He had no idea how the Jeep played whatever damn music it wanted, but he also didn't know how it drove on its own and rolled after Dawn wherever she went. Connor had stopped questioning things like that a long time ago.  
  
The lights of Los Angeles came into view as they came to an open spot in the road, and Connor rubbed the ragged stubble on his cheek as he eyed it anxiously. Tramping their way through the countryside to avoid large concentrations of Dawn's demonic pursuers had gone on long enough. Now, the real battle began.  
  
Dawn took one of his hands in her own and flashed him a reassuring smile as a single, meaningful word floated through his head.  
  
He clenched his jaw when her voice resounded in his mind, and his grip on her hand tightened. "I don't need answers, Dawn, I just need you safe."  
  
She nodded at that, as if maybe she'd actually bought it. Seemed only fair one of them did.  
  
Inwardly preparing himself for battle, Connor stared at the approaching lights of Los Angeles on the horizon and muttered, "Well, it sure as hell can't be any worse than Cleveland." 


	5. His Girl Friday The 13th

Title: An Unbearable Lightness of Brain Cells  
  
Author: Troll Princess  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Fandom: Buffy/Angel  
  
Pairing: None, I swear. Witch's honor. I don't care what it looks like. (Okay, well, maybe a smalllittle/small pairing. But not that one, 'cause ... uh, no. Just no.)  
  
Summary: A chance meeting between Connor and Dawn results in some major life-changing damage.  
  
Archive: Just give me fair warning.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or this universe. And of course, this is brutally obvious, as I am not currently on a rooftop in L.A. right now picking WB executives with an M-16.  
  
Spoilers for: Angel -- "Home"; Buffy -- "Chosen"  
  
*** Chapter Five: His Girl Friday the 13th ***  
  
During the complete and total destruction of Wolfram and Hart and its centrally located office complex, not to mention the chaos that ensued during that sort of minor apocalypse, the past (and future) employees of Angel Investigations somehow managed to smuggle away more office supplies than a temp with a grudge. Fred made it out of the place with enough lab equipment to turn one of the rooms in the new building into a mad scientist's dream, Wesley kept producing new Post-It notes like a magician pulling quarters out of children's ears, and Spike ... well, Spike had grabbed something he hadn't felt right leaving behind.  
  
In Angel's opinion, a rather loud and anoying something that was currently perched on the edge of his desk filing its nails.  
  
".. so then I thought that maybe I should just eat her and look in her pockets for loose change, but Blondie Bear said no eating the clients, so ..."  
  
Angel narrowed his eyes and resisted a growl as he looked up at Harmony from the report on his desk. The report was short, concise, full of badly lit photos that didn't tell him much, and attached to a map that told him even less but gave him far too much hope than he was starting to think he deserved. "Don't you have someone else to talk to?"  
  
"Not really. It's not like you have a secretarial pool I can beat up. Unless Wesley counts. Ooo, can I hit him?" She brightened considerably, and for a moment, he almost considered letting her do it.  
  
Of course, then he'd have Harmony *and* Wesley in his office ranting at him. With a resigned sigh, he turned his attention back to the file and said, "No, you can not hit Wesley."  
  
"Even if I promise not in the face?"  
  
"Look, don't you have work to do?"  
  
Harmony let loose with a disgusted yet ladylike snort as she rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right. Every time I touch something in this place, someone has a hissy fit. I was going to clean some of the weapons, but the Jolly Green Carson out there practically had a coronary when I picked up one of the axes."   
  
Angel winced. He didn't even want to think about Harmony going near the weapons, or what would make Lorne snatch an ax from her hands and run in the opposite direction. "Harmony --"  
  
"It's not that I don't like this thing where I stare at the wall and still get a paycheck. Although that probably pays more, but still."  
  
"You know, you can leave anytime you want. It's not like we've got you under lock and key."   
  
Harmony gave him a strange look as she stopped filing, and he added, "Okay, one time. But if you hadn't bitten that accountant --"  
  
"Are you trying to apologize?" she said, her expression genuinely confused.  
  
It suddenly struck Angel that an apology probably wasn't what she was looking for when it came to being chained up, and he almost shrunk down in his seat. "I guess not," he said, hoping in vain that maybe he'd sink down so far into the chair that an interdimensional portal would open up and dump him into an alternate universe where Harmony was mute.  
  
"So, how about it?"  
  
Annoyed, he looked back up at her and snapped, "How about what?"  
  
"The pummeling Wesley thing. I figure if I just walk right out and whack him one right in the nose, he'll never see me coming."  
  
Suddenly, a flash of golden-white light formed into a highly amused Cordelia sitting next to Harmony on the desk, and Angel couldn't help but smile as Harmony yelped and tipped sideways onto the floor. Cordelia, meanwhile, winked at him as she leaned over to look down at Harm and said, "Oh, please. He sees that at least once a day."  
  
Harmony scowled over at the glowing apparition that was Cordy as she got to her feet. "Angel, make her stop doing that."  
  
"She's a ghost, Harmony. I can't make her stop doing anything." Harmony frowned at that, but said nothing, which as Angel saw it was as close to Christmas come early as he was going to get.   
  
When Cordelia Chase had passed out of her body in the intensive care unit and into an entirely different plane of existence, Angel and the rest of the gang had tried desperately to go on without her and were in the middle of a miserable failure at it when Cordy had suddenly appeared in all her see-through, ghostly, Lite-Bright glory wandering the halls of Wolfram and Hart like a lost tourist. Once they'd gotten over the initial shock, Angel had been the first to ask her just why the hell she was hanging around and making fun of their wardrobe choices when she could be off somewhere floating on a cloud and playing a harp. Cordy had promptly snarked that she'd been asked to stop after five minutes of harp-playing (four and a half minutes early, Lorne had later remarked) and besides, her idea of Heaven was much more along the lines of sitting right next to Spike and repeating "I'm not touching you" until he went insane.  
  
Angel was still wondering what it would take to get on the waiting list for that particular Heaven.   
  
She couldn't help them with cases or crimes or the occasional apocalypse -- as she'd put it, they were on their own in the saving-mankind department -- but it was just nice to know she was still around somewhere, always ready to pop up out of nowhere and give them all a smile.  
  
"You mean *won't* make her stop," Harmony muttered, breaking him out of his reverie.  
  
"Exactly," he said, then gave Cordy a polite nod as he bent over his file again. "Cordy."  
  
"Hey, Angel," she said, then smiled wickedly as Harmony brushed some dust from her skirt. Leaning over until he had to squint from the glow, she said in a conspiratorial whisper, "Do you want to tell her we all know she's sleeping with Wesley, or can I?"  
  
Angel cocked an eyebrow at that. "Want to draw straws?"  
  
"How about Rock, Paper, Scissors?"  
  
The two of them held out their fists and were one count away from a decision when Harmony scowled and said, "Hey, standing right here. And also, so not nailing that big dumb British --"  
  
"Are, too," Cordy said.  
  
"Are not."  
  
"Are, too."  
  
"Look, we are not friends with benefits," Harmony snapped, nearly resorting to punctuating that statement with an indignant stamp of her foot. "Vampire's honor."   
  
"Then how do you explain that kiss you gave him before in the kitchen?"  
  
If Angel had been drinking a mug of fresh blood, he'd probably have choked on it, he thought, glancing over at Cordy as Harmony turned an intriguingly bright shade of red and offered up a sheepish smile. "Friends with an extraordinarily thorough dental plan?"  
  
"You know," Cordy said, "dating in the workplace? Worst idea on the planet. Trust me."  
  
Harmony's pretty brow furrowed in confusion as she crossed her arms. "Dating? What dating? There is no dating. Just lots of meaningless sex."  
  
Cordy and Angel stared at her as if she were wearing a platypus for a hat.  
  
Shutting the file, Angel forced a smile and said, "Okay, I officially know more about Wesley's sex life than I ever wanted to. How about you?" Cordy gave him a 'look', and it took him a full five seconds to remember what the last few months of Sunnydale High's existence had been like between the two of them. "Uh, forget I said that."  
  
Cordy swung around to face her former best friend, feet dangling playfully off the desk. "I'm just saying --"  
  
"Please," Harmony said with a roll of her eyes. "I'm getting relationship advice from the girl who didn't learn her safe-sex lesson the Ifirst/I time she was full of demon babies?"  
  
"Oookay," Cordy said. "That's Harmony, one, and my emotional well-being, a big old nothin'."  
  
Angel slammed his fist down on the desk next to the file and shot to his feet, and both women looked at him curiously. It wasn't as if either one of them was aggravating him on purpose -- neither one of them meant any harm by it ... hell, most of their conversations sounded like this. But somewhere between demon sightings and prophecies and a thin file filled with grainy photos of a beloved face, he didn't want to listen to anybody argue right now. Mostly, he just wanted to go back to his place and be depressed. He was really good at it, and he actually kind of like being depressed in times of strife. Which, granted, sort of defeated the purpose, but whatever.   
  
"I need to hit something," he said.   
  
Harmony took a cautious step backwards.  
  
Spike's blond head appeared in the open doorway, and Angel could now count the number of times in his lifetime he'd ever been glad to see Spike on two hands. "Hey, Peaches, just got a call in from that lookout of yours. Something large and scaly's prowlin' around the lot."  
  
"Huh," he said as he gave the ladies a far-too-cheery smile. "Imagine that."  
  
Cordy shook her head in amusement and vanished with a golden puff of smoke as Angel strode from the room right behind Spike.  
  
"I want to hit something, too," Harmony called after them.  
  
Out in the main office, Angel tossed Wesley the keys to the car. "Wesley, you're driving."  
  
Angel could have sworn he heard Harmony mutter, "Nuts."  
  
********  
  
"I still think you two crazy kids should hook up, you know. Maybe get locked together in a vault or something, yell at each other for a few days, then let your overriding passions get the better of you and go at it like bunny rabbits."  
  
Angel gritted his teeth and tried in vain to remember that Wesley was his friend, even if he did feel like putting his head through a brick wall right now. "Okay, you know what? No more of Fred's fan fiction for you."  
  
"What? I think you guys would look wonderful together . . . maybe get married, spawn two-point-five undead babies . . ." Wesley pulled up to the empty lot that had once been the location of Wolfram and Hart's offices, and the three of them exited the car armed to the gills. Angel Investigations had an undercover werewolf in a nearby building keeping an eye out on the land for any strange activities -- how much power might have sunk into the ground during Wolfram and Hart's destruction had become a legend among the supernatural set. Tonight, she'd spotted a hulking demon she couldn't identify by race searching the lot. Angel didn't want to think about what it was going to try here.  
  
"What is he ramblin' on about this time?" Spike asked.  
  
"Revenge for all the Harmony mocking," Angel muttered as he tried to look for the demon.  
  
"And loosely translated from angst-ridden poof ..."  
  
"He's suggesting you and me --"  
  
Angel didn't finish the sentence. Not like Spike would have let him if he'd tried, he thought, as Spike gave Wesley a dirty look as the former Watcher tried to keep the amused grin off his face. "I'm carryin' a large, pointy broadsword, you git."  
  
"And I'm carrying a sharpened number two pencil," Wesley said. "May the battle of the tired old cliche finally be decided."  
  
Annoyed, Angel stopped walking right in front of them, turned to face them, and held up his hands to get them to shut up. "Okay, you know what? There's only so much taunting at other people's expense I can handle right now. So I'm making a new company policy, here and now. I don't care who's having sex with whom, or when they do, or where they do it --"  
  
As casually as could be, Spike said, "So if I have sex with Lorne on your desk when we get back --"  
  
"-- then you will be scraping that mental image from my brain with a Brillo pad immediately afterwards," Angel said past clenched teeth.  
  
He stalked off still angry, but not quite as wound up as he'd been before, and Spike couldn't resist a smirk as Angel kicked in frustration at the lot's surface. "Bit amusin' to drive him out of his gourd, isn't it?"  
  
Wesley's gaze darkened as he watched Angel search the darkness trying to figure out where a supposedly massive reptilan demon could have gotten to. "Not as much as it used to be. But he needed to vent at someone, I suppose. Might as well be us."  
  
Spike narrowed his eyes as the mood turned serious. "You think he's got his thoughts on the hellspawn, don't you?"  
  
Frowning, they both gave Angel a worried look before Wesley said, "The sightings are moving further west, towards ..."  
  
"Towards here."  
  
Wesley nodded.  
  
"You think he's coming for Angel, then?"  
  
"I know he is," Wesley said, watching as Angel turned to walk back towards them.  
  
Suddenly, something came of nowhere behind Angel, as if from another dimension, and Spike yelled his name before moving towards him.  
  
Angel spun around just in time to be grabbed by a massive clawed hand and shoved to the ground, and he watched helplessly as the demon's tail snapped out. A moment later, Spike flew through the air and slammed into the open dumpster with a loud clang, and a string of British obscenities filled the air.   
  
The demon bent over Angel didn't look familiar, and he's seen plenty in his long years. This one reeked of rotten meat and other rancid scents he wasn't even about to identify. "You're not the one we seek," it remarked, then took a deep sniff of Angel's scent and smiled a Cheshire Cat grin dripping with bile and saliva. "Close enough," it said, moving closer to him with death in its eyes.  
  
"Angel, move!"  
  
Wesley raised the flamethrower he carried, and a second after Angel wrenched himself from the demon's grasp, the dark creature was engulfed in flames.  
  
It didn't even flinch ... just kept moving towards Angel with single-minded purpose. Wesley moved to fire on it once again, but a sound from behind stopped him.  
  
"That won't kill it."  
  
The voice coming from behind Wesley sounded oddly familiar, and he glanced back to see a wiry figure crouched in the darkness of a hidden doorway, a panther set to pounce on its prey. The figure's gaze focused on the hulking creature currently throwing Angel against the nearest dumpster, and its eyes narrowed.  
  
A flutter of movement from the shadows -- a quick glimpse of a thinner figure much too pale, too baby pink -- and the stranger rose in one eerily fluid motion as a ghostly white hand passed him a worn wooden baseball bat stained with demon blood. "This will," he said softly --  
  
-- a moment before the pale feminine hand touched the bat and the worn end of it burst into green-tinted flames.  
  
Wesley could only watch in fascination as a young man bearing an all-too-familiar face strode from the darkness with fierce determination, scanning the area with a hunter's trained eye before approaching the scaly demon. The beast sniffed loudly, and its head turned quickly to face the warrior heading towards it. "There you are," it hissed, and went for the young man.   
  
Reaching down to pick up Spike's sword, Wesley rose and made to join the fight only to be stopped by the gentle, heartstopping sensation of a hand grasping his. Startled, he looked down to see a far too slim young woman smiling up at him, a floppy newsboy hat and dark sunglasses obscuring her eyes and obviously bald head from view. Something about her reminded him of someone, but he couldn't quite recall who, and her touch stopped him from joining the battle.  
  
Meanwhile, the young warrior went at the demon with bat in hand, looking more like a major-league rookie determined to hit the winning run. The demon swiped at him with glistening claws extended, and the kid easily dodged each attack, the flame at the end of the bat never wavering. Suddenly, the demon turned just so, and spotting his opening, the young man thrust the bat into the creature's side with a tearing of flesh that rent the night air.  
  
It let loose with a high-pitched screamed as the green flames swallowed it whole.   
  
A minute later, all that was left was a smoldering corpse.  
  
The young man easily snapped the handle of the baseball bat off, then spun towards Angel and stalked towards him with makeshift stake in hand. Too stunned to move or think or breathe (if that were even possible), Angel let himself be shoved against the dumpster, suffered a thorough stare-down from a pair of eyes he'd thought he'd never look into again.  
  
And as Angel stared at his son for the first time in years, Connor rose the broken end of the bat to his father's chest and said, "Who are you, and what the hell are you doing in my head?" 


End file.
